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On most challenges confronting Millard Fillmore's administration, Daniel Webster and Fillmore saw eye to eye. They cooperated brilliantly to extinguish the fire over the Texas-New Mexico boundary and to secure passage of the Compromise. They shared a commitment to its finality. On two matters of critical political importance, however, Webster and Fillmore parted company, so much so that Webster's portrait of unanimity was disingenuous, if not wantonly hypocritical. This patient, tolerant stance sorely exasperated Webster. Rather than conciliating anti-Compromise Whigs, he advocated total war against them. Webster lusted for the presidency. Webster, with his single-minded pursuit of the presidency during 1851, inflicted as much damage on the northern Whig party, especially in New England, as any one individual possibly could.

This chapter discusses that the financial and commercial prominence of Baring Brothers imparted great political and diplomatic influence to the firm. It shows that the Webster and Ashburton succeeded in negotiating what became known as the Webster — Ashburton Treaty in these circumstances illustrates their desire to preserve peace and to promote economic intercourse between the two nations. It explains that Europe's renewed interest in U.S. happened when the federal government was in need of cash following the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846. It presents several examples on how the U.S. attracted Europe to make investments on America.

When Millard Fillmore signed the Compromise measures in September 1850 and the New York Democratic state platform endorsed them, William Henry Seward's New York allies instructed Thurlow Weed that the Whig party's state platform must demand revision or repeal of every prosouthern concession Congress had made. Fillmore's pro-Compromise stance must be publicly repudiated. Five days after New York's Whigs met, Daniel Webster penned the administration's response to this declaration of war. He understood why many northern Whigs opposed the compromise measures in Congress. These salvos opened a battle between Fillmore's administration and its northern Whig critics that lasted from the fall of 1850 to the Whigs' national convention in June 1852. Fundamentally, however, it revolved around a dispute over how to carry elections, about whether the campaign needs of local Whigs should be placed ahead of intersectional comity within the nation and the national party and of support for the national administration.

This chapter shows how the idea that slavery was fundamentally at odds with local heritage shaped abolitionist efforts to gain public support in the 1830s and 40s. In Boston, as the construction of the Bunker Hill Monument coincided with the development of an antislavery movement, abolitionists (led by William Lloyd Garrison) and monument‐builders (including Daniel Webster) vied for control over the American Revolution's legacy. Abolitionists' success in using Revolutionary rhetoric to get fugitive slave George Latimer freed from jail in 1842 was followed by another round of antislavery agitation in 1843, when abolitionists charged President John Tyler with bringing a slave to the Bunker Hill Monument's dedication. In examining the ensuing controversy about the commemoration of the Revolution, this chapter contends that abolitionists and their opponents were contesting not only the future course of the country but also the relationship between the present and the past.

Although Henry Clay referred to Congress' failure to enact his American System, his words reflected as well National Republicans' gloom. As a tiny minority, they would resist but they could not stop Andrew Jackson. The last Congress had frustrated their program, and the next Congress would apparently be even more heavily Jacksonian. A more effective opposition party proved dauntingly difficult to construct. Over the next eight years, as Jackson's opponents struggled to coalesce and expand the anti-Democratic coalition, the name of the National Republicans would be jettisoned. Prominent party builders like Clay and Daniel Webster would also learn, to their dismay, that they must temporarily sacrifice their presidential ambitions as well as their principles. Out of this prolonged effort between 1833 and 1840, the Whig party would emerge, larger in numbers, more heterogeneous in composition, and more successful in competing for office than National Republicans had ever been.

The story of the first Whig presidential administration is a story of opportunity lost. Although it is a tale often told, most accounts have been biographical and have focused largely on personal rivalries among Whig party leaders in Washington. Historians have carefully delineated the early maneuvering by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster for the presidential nomination in 1844 and the subsequent conflict between Clay and John Tyler, who succeeded William Henry Harrison as president. Personal rivalry and the clash between the president and the congressional wing of the party have thus been seen as the dominant themes of that administration and as the major causes of the Whigs' downfall. Hence, not just personal rivalry for the presidency or factional battles over patronage or disagreements between the president and Congress upended the Whig party during its first presidential administration. The paralyzing effect of those divisions on the attempt to legislate policies did the most damage.

This chapter discusses the politics and aesthetics of deliberation. It states that the aesthetics of deliberation evolved in tandem with its politics. Henry Clay contributed to the evolution of Congress by building up the post of House Speaker, an accomplishment that acted as a piece of his interpretation of the presidency and his theory of republicanism. Clay's associate Edward Everett was a leading analyst of deliberative eloquence and an influential advocate for literary oratory. He laid out the criteria for aesthetically compelling parliamentary rhetoric in an 1827 North American Review article on the collection of Clay's speeches. The chapter describes Daniel Webster's speeches and states that Webster crafted a rhetorical style that combined broad knowledge with an elegant vernacular idiom, sentiment with clear, accessible argument.

This chapter focuses on modern Atlantic World republicanism. The leaders of the American and French Revolutions are said to have introduced republicanism on a grand scale in Atlantic world politics, and shortly after the peaceable era arrived during which it became possible to evaluate the improvements in human liberty and happiness. The chapter states that three decades after the fall of the Bastille and the drafting of the United States Constitution, these two experiments in modern republicanism reached very different outcomes. The contours of modern Atlantic world republicanism as it existed in 1820 can be glimpsed in three orations delivered by Simón Bolívar, Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, and Daniel Webster between February 1819 and December 1820. Oratory is the pre-eminent genre of republicanism, and major formulations of modern republican thought were initially presented in orations such as these, which were later circulated in letters, newspaper accounts, and pamphlets reaching national and international audiences.

This chapter examines Everett’s service as US minister to Britain with a special eye towards the multiple slavery-related issues with which he and his British counterparts dealt. These included such issues as Britain’s drive for American cooperation in the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, British liberation of American fugitive slaves headlined by the Creole case, and the American government’s drive to annex Texas. Everett continued to occupy a conservatively antislavery position, which put him in tension with President John Tyler and the Southern-friendly Secretaries of State under which he mostly worked.

This chapter begins with Everett’s return to the U.S. and service as president of Harvard College, and follows his thoughts and actions relative to slavery, race, reform, and the Union through 1852. Highlights and revealing moments in this period include his moves towards potentially admitting Harvard’s first African-American student, Everett’s eulogy for fallen antislavery statesman John Quincy Adams, correspondence with Free Soil Party leaders in the presidential election year of 1848 in relation to a possible vice presidential nomination, and the debates leading to the Compromise of 1850. Everett was deeply uncomfortable with the Fugitive Slave Act as part of that Compromise, but soon thereafter fought on the battlefields of memory to vindicate the Compromise and especially its proponent Daniel Webster.

Chapter 1 examines American reactions to the 1821 Greek War of Independence and the Cretan Insurrection of 1866-1869. Prompted by American philhellenes, politicians, religious organizations, and activists argued vehemently for American intervention to help their “Christian brothers” in Greece and Crete. In their push for intervention, Americans cited the need for humanitarian intervention and based their arguments on developing concepts of international law to counter arguments against non-entanglement, as spelled out in the Monroe Doctrine and advanced most forcefully by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Undeterred by such policies, the American philhellenic movement, led by men such as Edward Everett, Samuel Gridley Howe, and Daniel Webster, helped galvanize the American public to aid the Greeks.

During a West Point graduation ceremony, the United States boldly announced that it was willing to strike the first blow against emerging threats. This declaration signaled a profound shift in the nation's plan for protecting itself and cast off a consensus on the imminence rule, which limits the first use of force to cases of self-defense against an imminent threat and to which virtually every other nation had subscribed since World War II. This chapter examines the dimensions of the United States's policy on striking first by looking at the origins of the imminence rule, what it means, and why its ability to strike a balance between security and restraint is now in doubt. In particular, it traces the rule back to an 1837 incident that strained relations between America and Britain: the attack on steamship Caroline by Canadian loyalists. It considers the so-called Webster's Rule, attributed to secretary of state Daniel Webster, governing the use of anticipatory force based on two criteria: necessity and proportionality. It also discusses the relevance of the Webster's Rule when applied to terrorism.

This chapter presents concluding remarks on the past and future of deliberative democracy. It discusses Daniel Webster's long political career and the controversy over his support of the 1850 Compromise Measures. This action is said in this chapter to have produced one of the most enduring debates over the value of politics in the history of the United States as Webster embodied for many of his contemporaries the figure of the heroic statesman, the eloquent, principled man of action. The chapter explores black liberation theology that was unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight during the 2008 presidential campaign in the United States when Barack Obama was called upon to explain his membership of the Trinity United Church of Christ. Trinity pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright's combative presence in public forums at this time was distinguished in both tone and substance from Obama's moderate tone, deliberate approach, and uplifting, unifying rhetoric.

This chapter presents an introduction to deliberation and offers a genealogy of deliberative democracy exploring the overlap between deliberative democracy theory and neorepublicanism. It discusses the Atlantic world context of the modern republic and its deliberative values by examining three speeches by republican thinkers—Simón Bolívar, Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, and Daniel Webster. Some of the major sources of deliberative thought in the early American republic and the politics and aesthetics of deliberation in Webster's speeches are described. The chapter focuses on the scenes of deliberation in the novels of Lydia Maria Child and James Fenimore Cooper and offers strategies for deliberative reading, a set of hermeneutic tools intended to stimulate critical awareness of deliberative processes and styles. These tools include a focus on scenes of deliberation and strategies of surrogation and creation of imagined deliberations in which varied perspectives are brought into relation with one another.

After a brief overview of theories of genre, the chapter argues that The Witch can best be understood as participating in the folk horror genre. While folk horror is most often associated with British films such as The Wicker Man (1973) and Witchfinder General (1968), the chapter argues for particular traditions of New England folk horror, as evident in films such as The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) and The Blair Witch Project (1999).

This chapter describes the similarities between the Jackson administration and the Whig presidency of William Henry Harrison, particularly the same aggressive defense of executive power that is often associated with the Jacksonian Democrats. This was surprising, since the Whig Party's self-proclaimed raison d'etre was belief in a limited and weak executive branch. Many observers had assumed that the election of Harrison would mark a sharp reversal in the president's position with regard to the unitary executive. Surely, given the vehement opposition of the Whigs to presidential removals during the Jackson and Van Buren administrations and Harrison's preelection dedication to strict limitations on presidential power, the Harrison administration would have little choice but to adhere to the limited vision of the executive power it had previously so vigorously espoused. However, despite the best efforts of Whig luminaries Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, Harrison clung steadfastly to a belief in the assertive use of the executive power.

Chapter 5 examines the creation of the myth of America’s Christian origins in the early nineteenth century. It discusses the impact of the Second Great Awakening, the deification of George Washington, early revolutionary histories, claims of Christianity forming part of the law, and the rehabilitation of the Puritans. The idea of America’s religiously inspired founding was a consciously created myth constructed by the second generation of Americans in their quest to forge a national identity, one that would reinforce their ideals and aspirations for the new nation. This process of reinterpreting the founding began as early as the late 1790s but gained momentum in the second decade of the following century as a new generation of leaders arose who had little first-hand knowledge of the founding period. In seeking to construct a national identity that conformed to their own religious sentimentalities and political aspirations, they invented a myth of America’s Christian past. This narrative coalesced completely by the 1830s.

Chapter Five centers on New York senator William Henry Seward, soon to be Lincoln’s secretary of state, who recognized sooner than most other Republicans that the secession epidemic in the Deep South created an imminent threat of war. To counteract the most emotionally charged issue that divided North and South, he drafted the constitutional amendment to bar any interference with slavery in the states where it existed. Seward reminded white Southerners that their rights within the Union were secure, whereas “the horrors of civil war” would make any of their perceived grievances look trivial by comparison.

This chapter describes John Jordan Crittenden as part of a dying breed. The seventy-year old senator from Kentucky had been one of the earliest supporters of the Whig Party from its inception in the mid-1830s. Many of his old Whig colleagues, such as Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, had passed away. Others had left the party to join the fledgling Republican organization in the North, or switched over to the Democrats in the South. The Whig Party was so depleted that Crittenden himself would have to find a new political organization. Unlike some Southern Whigs, the Kentucky senator had no intention of switching allegiances to the Democrats. Crittenden had long opposed that party's ideological tenets, and recent events had strengthened his disapproval.

The debates over the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 reveal key proslavery arguments, such as the importance of economic utility, a sense that slavery is nearly ubiquitous in human history, and that slavery cannot be ended without doing more harm than good. Such arguments, which mirror arguments made by proslavery southern academics, confirm that the academics and politicians were speaking a similar language. While the Fugitive Slave Act has often been studied in the North, as an episode where Northerners debated whether to follow an unjust law, in the South the Act served to reconfirm values about the morality of holding humans as property. When antislavery northerners argued against the Act, southern supporters used the debate to articulate the jurisprudence of slavery: that it was supported by economic considerations and that it was immoral to free enslaved people because that would result in more suffering than continuing slavery.